Starvation, poverty and disease are market driven.

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

What a tragedy. A beautiful little boy who should be experiencing all the pleasures that a healthy and well fed young life can offer. I can barely look at it without wanting to take him in my arms and caress the little man; hold him like I have my own little ones, or the way we hold our pets.  A mother or father whose kisses and hugs bring such joy to the recipient and the giver is waiting for that moment when starvation and lack of water, ensures he breathes his last breath. It's not a nice death is it?  Look at the body and the physical pain it brings to the child and the emotional pain to the adult, herself, not far from death's door. 

The scene in the picture is indeed horrific. It is heart wrenching, sad, makes us angry and makes us want to cry at the same time.  But let's get something clear in our heads. What we see in the picture, a starving boy being given water by his equally deprived mother, or female guardian, is not something that occurs because of a lack of resources or money.  The condition prevails not because people in that particular part of the world are lazy or stupid or can't govern themselves.  It is not as some might argue, god's wrath, or the devil's work or the work of any supernatural beings or ghostly demons. It is not because of overpopulation or that there's too many people on the planet.

This young boy will die of starvation amid plenty.   He will die of diseases that were cured long ago.  The cause of these events is political and economic.  Society has infrastructure and that infrastructure is put in place by directing capital and labor power to do so.  The trillion or two the US has spent in Iraq would solve world hunger, would eliminate what we see here forever.

The infant mortality, disease and starvation that engulf millions of people in this world is a product of the market, of capitalism.  The communities in which these people live have little public infrastructure, no water system, no sewage system and instead unsafe water and sewage flows openly in the streets if at all. There is no medical and health care system in place. Diet is poor and shelter is inadequate. The money is there to remedy this.  But the owners of capital, capitalists as the Wall Street Journal calls them as opposed to many anti-capitalists who choose words like corpocracy, plutocracy, meritocracy, oligarchy and other terms to avoid calling them what they are, will not allocate capital to buy labor power and the necessary materials necessary to end this savagery.

According to Global Issues:
10.6 million children died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy

1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation

The money is there to change this:
A conservative estimate for 2010 finds that at least a third of all private financial wealth, and nearly half of all offshore wealth, is now owned by world’s richest 91,000 people – just 0.001% of the world’s population.

The world’s billionaires — just 497 people (approximately 0.000008% of the world’s population) — were worth $3.5 trillion (over 7% of world GDP).

The world spent close to $2 trillion on military hardware in 2012 with the bulk of that coming from the US, the worlds largest arms dealer by far. Corporations are hoarding trillions, private capitalists have stashed away some $26 trillion or more in offshore tax havens. Poverty and most disease can be eliminated, but capitalism cannot do it; it is the cause of it.

The US president Obama, Hilary Clinton and all the other representatives of wall Street and the system that perpetuates the misery we see in the graphic, are prepared to bomb Syria because of the deaths of less than 2000 people.  But the policies that these people institute and defend to the teeth kill millions of children and adults yearly; their deaths are not accidents, they are the product of conscious decisions by human beings.

These conditions and the endless wars that we currently see begun by primarily by the US government  cannot be eradicated under the present economic system we know as capitalism.  It is not simply that they cannot be eradicated in what is often called the developing world, they are on the increase in the advanced capitalist countries also. As an earlier blog pointed out, the cost of making the world safe for US corporations is not only causing untold environmental damage and misery for the world's populations, it is also driving US workers further in to poverty and debt.  Even the US troops are facing cuts to necessary services.  This will hasten the crisis in the US military much like the crisis that occurred during the imperialist war against Vietnam.

It is pointless feeling guilty about having a better life than the woman and her child in the picture.  We are not individually responsible for it and guilt is a pointless emotion that accomplishes little.  We can collectively end it though.   I was talking to a group of young men the other night, they were all well educated and relatively financially secure. They had good jobs but when it came to understanding the forces at play in society and what was going on in the world around them, especially US capitalism's role in it, they were clueless and actually accepted that they were oblivious to much of what is going on.  This is nothing to be proud of even though, the forces against us in the US are considerable as we are faced day in day out with an ideological  offensive from the 1% about the merits of their system and how there's opportunity for all if we take the bull by the horns.

Throughout the world,  workers are fighting back against the capitalist offensive.  Working class women that fill the factories of Bangladesh have waged street battles against factory owners and their hired thugs.  Chinese workers have struck foreign multinationals for higher wages and better conditions and won raises of as much as $20% and this is without independent unions.
Indigenous people throughout Latin America, India, Indonesia and the entire world are leading the struggle against the environmental devastation caused by the energy giants and mining companies.

Greek workers, Portuguese workers, women and gays in Russia, are all refusing to be cowed by the worshipers of the market. And we saw the rise of the Occupy Movement in the US that challenged the repressive laws of the 1% and battled the new beefed up security apparatus built in anticipation of the resistance that will occur to the increased offensive of capital.

And here in the US, we should not underestimate the developments that have occurred around Obama's eagerness to bomb Syria.  The outpouring of opposition has been intense and this has caused the 1%'s representatives in Congress to push back against Obama's war drive.  In a twist of irony, it looks like old Putin might have thrown Obama a lifeline brokering a deal with Syria's Assad to have the UN take charge of that country's chemical weapons stash.

This development is very positive and when we consider the ongoing global resistance to the capitalist offensive we should be inspired and optimistic about it.  But we must take the bull by the horns, we must accept firstly in our own consciousness that the present state of affairs will eventually lead to the end of life as we know it, market driven wars and environmental catastrophe all in the pursuit of profits will ensure it. We must recognize that the most destabilizing force in society today and the reason for much of world poverty is US capitalism.  American's cannot find a solution to our problems within the borders of our own nation state.  The solution to the starvation we see in the graphic, the endless wars and driving back our own 1%'s austerity agenda lies in the building of a global movement.  Capitalism is global and the fight against it's destructive effects must be global.

Replacing an economic system of production where a tiny minority of individuals own the means by which we produce the necessities of life and who set these forces in motion only for personal gain, is our goal.  Capitalism is an anarchistic unplanned system of production, it cannot advance humanity.  It is, as we say here, past its expiration date.  Only a democratic socialist economy and political system can solve the crises that capitalism creates.

A couple of things to remember:
The Soviet union was not a socialist or communist society.
Socialism is not a utopian idea it's just a different way of constructing human society
Sweden, Finland or a national health service is not socialism or communism
Obama is not a socialist (for my American brothers and sisters only)
Capitalism overthrew feudalism and socialized production
Socialism will take it one step further and socialize ownership of the process of production, distribution and exchange. It brings economic democracy.

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The debate on the causes of the Great Recession

Mick Brooks comments here on the debate within the Committee For a Workers' International on the causes of the Great Recession and capitalist crisis. Check out a review or order Mick Brooks' book here .

by Mick Brooks

Since the outbreak of the Great Recession Marxists have debated its cause. This is a vital theoretical issue for understanding the world around us.

The debate centres around the issue as to whether the present crisis is caused by falling profits as explained by Marx’s law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit (LTFRP), dealt with in chapters 13-15 of ‘Capital Volume III’. Others argue that the crisis can be explained as one of underconsumption.

This debate is bubbling under within the ranks of the CWI. The leadership of the CWI (as of the IMT) take what I would characterise as an underconsumptionist position. Already two blogs are circulating inside the ranks of the CWI that advocate the LTFRP explanation, in addition to an excellent short film, and debates are beginning to take place in the localities. Signs of intelligent life? It looks like it. Check out:

Marx returns from the Grave, http://69.195.124.91/~brucieba/ 

Socialism is Crucial, http://socialismiscrucial.wordpress.com/

It should be explained at the outset that all parties agree that a crisis of capitalism takes the form of overproduction, of unsold goods, as it says in the ‘Communist Manifesto’. Overproduction and crisis, however, are not permanent features of capitalist production. It remains to be explained why capitalism dips into crisis when it does.

The leadership, reacting to criticism, has resorted to an ‘underconsumptionist’ explanation of the cause of crisis. The crisis is caused, according to a quote from Chapter 30 of ‘Capital Volume III’ by “the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses.” (As one of the bloggers, CrucialSteve, points out this was actually a bracketed note added by Engels into the original text.)

The problem with the underconsumptionist explanation is that there is a permanent tendency for capitalism to restrict the purchasing power of the working class, because it is a system based on profit. Underconsumptionism therefore has no explanatory power as an explanation of crisis.

In any case not all commodities are produced for workers – pallet trucks and computer numerically controlled machine tools are capital goods bought by capitalists. There are also luxury goods consumed only by capitalists such as yachts and private jets. Why should there be a specific outbreak of overproduction of consumer goods intended for workers’ consumption such as jumpers rather than pallet trucks or yachts? Empirically crises of overproduction usually break out in the capital goods industries. Investment is the most volatile element in national income.

The opposition bloggers within the CWI have a powerful argument in their favour – the rate and mass of profit in the major capitalist countries fell sharply prior to the onset of crisis in 2007. Marx’s theory is confirmed! To take the case of the USA:

“The US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) shows that in the 3rd quarter of 2006 the mass of profits peaked at $1,865bn. By the 4th quarter of 2008 it bottomed out at $861bn.” (Brooks – Capitalist crisis; theory and practice, p.32)

The facts confirm Marx’s analysis of the LTFRP as the fundamental cause of crisis. Why should this cause surprise, since we all agree that capitalism is a system of production of profit?

The school of Marxian economists who support this analysis view the falling rate and also mass of profit only as an underlyingcause of crisis. Essentially the argument is about levels of causation in the crisis. What about the financial aspect of the crisis – the housing bubble, crazy loans and collapsing banks? Of course this was all very important. These specific factors profoundly influence the depth and nature of the downturn. Every crisis is a unique event with its own characteristics. But, with or without a ‘financial crisis’ the fact that the mass of profits in the USA, the most important capitalist country, halved over two years would have provoked a big collapse of output in any case.

How does the leadership of the CWI deal with the detailed criticisms of their approach thrown up by the advocates of the importance of the LTFRP as an explanation of crisis? Lynn Walsh argues in ‘Socialism Today’ that profit and investment have become disconnected in recent decades. “Despite the staggering increase in the share of income taken by the top 1% in the US, investment declined.”(‘Socialism Today’, November 2012) So profits (with the share of the top 1% as a proxy) are supposed have soared at the expense of working people, but this has not translated into productive investment. Walsh concludes, “This factual data..., in our view confirms the analysis of a crisis in capital accumulation put forward in ‘Socialism Today’ over many years” (ibid.).

If true, this is not an explanation for a pattern of booms and slumps. It presents a stagnationist perspective for the future of capitalism, a permanent slowing down of the rate of accumulation. Is the CWI serious about decades of stagnation? How do they explain the present crisis, where investment fell as a result of the fall in profits?

In fact there is a simple explanation for this alleged disjunction between profits and investment: the profit figures quoted are wrong. Michael Roberts has meticulously chronicled the rate of profit since the Second World War in his blog. Nobody has challenged his figures, which attempt to look beneath conventional statistics to work out a Marxian rate of profit.

Roberts concludes: first that there has been no return to the fabulous profits enjoyed by capitalists during the golden years of the post-War boom; and secondly that the rate of profit today in 2013 remains below that of 2007 before the onset of the great Recession. Andrew Kliman also carefully shows (in ‘The failure of capitalist production’) that the reason for lower investment in the years since 1974 is lower profits. There is just less to invest. Simples.

The CWI leadership buttress their ‘explanation’ as to why investment has been lower with recourse to the notion of financialisation. As Lynn Walsh argues in the same article, more and more funds have been gobbled up by financial shenanigans in preference to investing in industry. There is no mystery here. In so far as more “profits disappeared into the financial sector” (ibid.), that is a response to lower pickings to be made in production – because of the LTFRP itself.

Increasing exploitation of the workers over recent decades has not led to increasing rates of accumulation because of financialisation, it is asserted.  This is part of the analysis of a whole school of thought, regarding itself as Marxian, which sees the current crisis as one of the neoliberal form of capitalism rather than capitalism as a whole. In fact this is the conventional wisdom of the majority of academic Marxist economists. A whole new stage of capitalism is supposed to have developed since about 1980, buttressed by the holy trinity of globalisation, neoliberalism and financialisation.

Dumenil and Levy’s book – ‘The crisis of neoliberalism’, 2011 – is an example. Phil Hearse writing in Socialist Resistance, the publishing house of the so-called Fourth international, also refers to “a neoliberal ‘regime of accumulation’”. The logic of this approach seems to be that neoliberalism should be destroyed rather the capitalist system overthrown. 

As we see, the CWI leadership has swallowed this analysis whole. By accepting the interpretation of this school the CWI is on a slippery slope indeed. We’re with the opposition within their ranks on this one.

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A poem on the 74th Anniversary of Trotsky's murder

          

                           

                                       You Are The Old Man In The Blue House

                                           
                                               after Bertrand M Patenaude

                                         Making impossible promises to yourself.

                                         Outdoors the cactus, the wolves.

                                         The hour of nowhere else to go.

                                         It’s a decade since the new god stamped

                                         your passport ‘invalid’.

                                        Your fifty-ninth birthday is candied plums

                                        and two small orchestras.

                                        Out there your friends welcome

                                        bullets in the back of the head.

                                       An August storm batters the porch

                                       with the Chief Prosecutor’s words:

                                       Down with the vulture, these miserable hybrids

                                       of foxes and pigs!

                                       In your hand

                                       the pistol with not enough ammunition.

                                       You wait for you know not who

                                       to hug your skull and whisper.

                                       “Everything is finished”;

                                       indulge in just one more

                                       promise that won’t come true over

                                       the candied plums and two small orchestras

                                       in the hour of nowhere else to go.

                                       KEVIN HIGGINS 

The poem has also been translated into Spanish and the translation published in the online Mexican literary magazine Cuadrivio. 

Today is the 74th anniversary of the murder in Mexico City, by an agent of Soviet Military Intelligence, of the exiled co-organiser of the Russian Revolution.

Above is a poem I wrote a few years ago about Trotsky's last years. He wrote extensively about literary and artistic matters, co-authoring (with André Breton & Diego Rivera) a 'Manifesto For an Independent Revolutionary Art'.The poem originally appeared in The Galway Advertiser in 2009.

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Egypt. Worldwide. Yeats. Joyce. Homesick.

by Sean O'Torrain

In my home country (Ireland) the old way is to make out you know as little as possible. Like African Americans came to learn showing your were too smart could get you killed by the ruling elite. So like many others of my background I will say "You know you might be right there, by God your are not so slow, I will have to think about that now." As I said, the rule tended to be whatever you say say nothing.

I am only rambling on here. Well maybe not. I am a wee bit homesick today, missing the grey mist of rain, the grey rocks sticking up through green grass, the grey Atlantic crashing on to the western shores. While here I am in in Chicago, a flat ugly city where if you go over a bump on the road it threatens to give you an erotic experience.

So anyway where was I?  I had a wee read of Yeats there to keep me going, I know he was influenced by fascism towards the end but he was a poet of great genius. He also had a bit of humor. He wrote:"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through periods of joy." I am laughing here.

He also wrote: "Things fall apart the center cannot hold." This brings me to today. I am getting old and this is a factor. I have some health problems and this is another factor. But this not the full story. The full story is that I just cannot keep up with all the gigantic uprisings and wars and civil wars climate destruction, the rising of the women, the movements against sexism and racism,  and new issues with which we are being confronted. Never has there been a time like this. Yes it for sure is right. For capitalism things fall apart the center cannot hold.

But for the working class thing are not so good either. The center is not holding together too good there either. The big issue is this. What force will arise or will a force arise that can overthrow capitalism and take society forward to its new phase  of international democratic socialism before all is destroyed by climate change, mass starvation and nuclear war. The union and labor leaders control the organizations of the working class and should do this job. They should be providing the aggressive offensive center. But they will not. Cowardly, intellectually duller than ducks, with their badly designed suits huddling beside the Obamas and the rest of them, they are terrified. Only if a movement is built below them that threatens all their privileges and positions will they do anything.

So new forces will have to be built. We see the youth and workers and women in Egypt forcing the overthrow of Mubarak, then making the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood untenable, and now taking on the military. It is heroic, beyond heroic. We see them taking on the US armed military with only rocks and their bare hands. I cannot see the steps forward that are necessary internationally being taken without such steps.

I do not think that what Marx said that capitalism could be changed peacefully is any longer accurate. Look at the richest of the major capitalist countries the US. Before the working class are even rising the capitalist class have armed its state to the teeth, are spying on just about everybody. They are ready to put the workers movement down in blood in every country. Is the Egyptian  military's decision to put down the Muslim Brotherhood come hell or high water not the music of the future?

Unless.

Unless, that is, fighting forces are built in the working class. Not just amongst the courageous youth.  But also amongst the big battalions, the working class, in the factories, the transport industries, the energy sectors, the huge retail chains and so on. And fighting forces that take on the divisions, the sexism, the racism,  and are prepared to fight and literally fight, that is not just by giving out flyers. This will be important of course in the struggle for the consciousness of the working class but serious combative measures will be necessary.

I remember being at a meeting of auto workers in Detroit some years ago. I think it was around the Delphi struggle. There were about a dozen workers around the table talking tactics. I made the point that the bosses would win unless the factories were taken over and physically defended, other forces mobilized on the outside to fight and an all out battle such as the 1930's waged, such as the youth of the black revolt waged. I remember so clearly how the eyes of the workers turned away. They were not ready to hear that. The Delphi bosses won. The working class will have to stop turning away, will  have to face this reality, will have to be ready to hear this, or face defeat.

And what about the left and the radical forces here and internationally. I agree with putting forward a program for a new society and also using the transitional method. but I do not agree with leaving the issue of strategy and tactics aside. We have to tell the truth. The bosses will massacre the workers in their millions if they are allowed to in their effort to keep the power. I believe the bosses would be prepared to drop tactical nuclear weapons on their own cities to keep the power. Not only do we have to prepare to fight but we also have to tell workers they have to organize to fight and this also means winning over sections of the state apparatus. The gains of the thirties were won by fighting, the gains of the 60's also. They are all being taken away.

And back again to wee Yeats and also Joyce. Yeats said "Do not wait to strike when the iron is hot but make it hot by striking." He said "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." He wrote :"Think like a wise man (woman) but communicate in the language of the people."  Wee Yeats  was not so slow.

Then there is the man himself wee Joyce. But before quoting him. The revolutionary left and this includes all of us, including myself, have achieved the most pathetic of results in this period of worldwide upheaval with the center not holding. I believe this has been because of a combination of left sectarianism, ultra leftism and opportunism. I may be wrong on this. But there is some reason more than the objective situation for our pathetic failure. We have to stop this what we used to call at home :"whistling past the graveyard." That is pretending that all is well when anybody with an eye in their head can see it is not. And when the proof is there for all to see. There are no mass forces moving to the revolutionary left.

So to Joyce. He wrote: "A man's (woman's) errors are his portals of discovery." What do I mean by putting this here. I mean that the revolutionary left have made mistake after mistake in the past decades. Myself included. We have to face up to this. And dialectically turn these mistakes into their opposite that is "portals" which if we enter can allow us to correct our ways. This means openly recognizing and articulating publicly our mistakes. I do this regularly. What makes me worry more than anything else is that most of the small forces which claim the mantle of revolutionary socialism continue to go on as if they have never made any mistake, as if they are still correct on everything. This is a recipe for disaster. We have to as wee Joyce said see that our errors are made into portals for discovery. This means openly and publicly articulating our errors and discussing these in the working class movement in as Yeats says the language "of the people.

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Seattle Socialist Votes. Reflections.

By John Throne (Sean)

We had a piece on this blog yesterday congratulating Kshama Sawant on her campaign for Seattle City Council. Kshama is a member of Socialist Alternative, the US section of the Committee for a Workers’ International. I am a former member of the CWI spending 25 years of my life as a full timer for that organization.  I first met the group in Northern Ireland in the 1970’s. 

Myself and some other socialists, some who left the CWI and other groups voluntarily and others like me who were expelled or driven out, have drawn the conclusion that the failure of the left to build a serious revolutionary or left current within the working class is not entirely due to the objective conditions or false perspectives. I have come to the conclusion that the internal life of left/socialist groups (including the CWI of which I was a member) is seriously flawed.  The leadership’s of these groups adamantly refuse to discuss in any serious way the internal life of these organizations, the mistakes we made, and how we came to this point and how we can correct the situation. And I know we made very serious errors.

I unconditionally supported and support the campaign of Kshama Sawant in Seattle despite my refusal to keep quiet about what I consider to be the incorrect internal life and the left sectarianism of the CWI, the organization to which she belongs.

I would also say that I have always said that I consider this incorrect internal life and left sectarianism applies to all the revolutionary left groups. I have had more emphasis on the CWI because that it the organization with which I have had the greatest experience and also because it was arguably the most successful of the revolutionary left groups for a period. It led the poll Tax struggle that was instrumental in bringing down Thatcher. It was the main force in the Liverpool City council struggle. It had a number of people elected in the Scottish and the English and Irish and European parliaments. Of the revolutionary left groups it has been amongst the most successful if not the most successful. But we need to have a balance.

I am presently writing a book on my political evolution. I discussed with most of the sizeable left groups after being involved in the Derry uprising in 1969. I joined the Militant, the British section of the CWI and was its first member in Southern Ireland and its first full timer in Ireland as a whole. We started out with about 6 or 7 members in 1970 and when I left Ireland to work internationally we had about 400.

I did not join the CWI by accident. I joined it for its good points. It had a generally correct worldview for the three decades following World War 2. This was crucial. However, in the course of events, it became apparent to me that this worldview, that capitalism was in crisis and was headed for a cataclysmic crisis and along with this, Stalinism was in turmoil and also headed for a major crisis amounting to a race between the political revolution in the East and the socialist revolution in the West, was not correct.

This is to put it mildly. It is also necessary for me to say and to emphasize that I share responsibility for the CWI developing this incorrect worldview and more responsibility than most other members as I was on the leading bodies of this organization.

The CWI argued that capitalism could not be returned to the Stalinist world as capitalism itself was in such an extreme crisis. Our argument was that the workers in the Stalinist world would rise up and establish democratic socialist societies and if the workers in the capitalist world had not already established democratic socialist societies these political revolutions in the East would spread the revolution to the West. In the 1980's we spoke of 5 to 10 years to the world socialist revolution.

We were very, very wrong with this perspective. This major mistake in perspectives hit the CWI like a wrecking ball. And this is where the incorrect internal life came in. There had always been an incorrect internal life in the CWI. It was, as they all are, too top down with an aversion to genuine probing and internal debate and a ferocious opposition to factions. The internal life of the CWI was a break from the methods of the Bolsheviks in their healthy period where debate and factional struggle was the norm and setting up a faction was no crime against the revolutionary party. Trotsky wrote in 1935: “During the 17 years when Bolshevism arose, grew and gained strength and came to power factions were a legitimate part of Party life.”  Trotsky talks about there even being factions inside factions in the Bolshevik Party. Engels wrote that internal conflict was the law of development of the revolutionary party. There were always factions and even factions within factions.

The internal life of the CWI was also a break with the norm of the Bolsheviks in their healthy period when all debate was public and available for all those interested to read. Some comrades have asked me where I was when this incorrect internal life was the norm and the comrades are entirely correct and justified in asking this question.

I made a major mistake over this period. The perspectives were being confirmed by events. The CWI was going from strength to strength. Issues such as internal life and left sectarianism did not seem to be problems. It was just a question of organizing and building on the existing ideas. But then the world changed. Capitalism was restored in the former Soviet Union, a development we categorically denied could happen. This development in the old Soviet Union, the rise of new technology and the boom that accompanied it in the west and the assault on the working class worldwide gave capitalism a new burst of energy. 

Of course, capitalism remains in a major crisis and will enter a new economic crisis soon, and without doubt the crisis of climate change threatens life on the planet as we know it but for a while it appeared that capitalism had triumphed. The Wall Street Journal gloated in its editorial heading when Stalinism collapsed: "We Won."  Boasting that finally, the critics had come to realize how the “world really works.”

These mistaken perspectives we held in the CWI need not necessarily have had such a devastating affect on the group, major splits and a collapse in membership from around 14,000 to about 2,000, if the internal life had not been so unhealthy. This internal life was not accustomed to internal struggle and debate. What was needed was for the organization to be thrown open to the most democratic and public debate on the major mistakes made and why these had been made. Unfortunately the majority of the top leadership of the CWI did not take this road. They maintained the extremely damaging view that they had never made any mistakes or it was the other faction that had made the mistakes and by that time there were two major factions, both of which wanted to split to set up their own organization.

So the most undemocratic practices developed with full power. The leadership and its hangers on waged a war against any member or members that threatened their positions. Dirty maneuvers, slander and all sorts of personal attacks and lies were hurled against anyone who disagreed with them including expulsions and in the midst of this debacle the majority of the membership walked away. The incorrect internal life prevented the CWI membership from correcting the ideas and developing a new perspective and this was for amongst other reasons because the majority of the top leadership would not admit to making any mistakes, they saw themselves as teachers of the organization as opposed to being in a democratic interaction with the membership.

Some of us began to see this for what it was. We set up a faction in North America. Every lie that the top leadership of the CWI could think up was thrown at us and we were expelled and denied our right to appeal. The idea that the majority of the top leadership had made major mistakes, that we all had major mistakes had to be squelched at all costs.

But having said all this why did those of us like myself and Richard Mellor who also writes for this blog and was a CWI member and well known activist in the trade union movement join  the CWI and not some other group? We did so because of its good qualities. Firstly, the CWI held correct perspectives up until the 1970's. But also, and of extreme importance, is its orientation to the working class. That is its belief that only the working class could change society and it’s basing itself concretely on this position. Most left groups do not have an orientation to the working class. They have an orientation to the left petit bourgeois or the left liberal wing of the trade union bureaucracy. The CWI have never made this mistake. More than anything else this is why many others and myself joined the CWI. I am very pleased to see from afar that it looks as if the CWI has maintained this orientation. I see on the website the posters in Seattle with the emphasis on the $15.00 and hour minimum wage. I see in Minneapolis the emphasis on stopping an eviction.  This is good.

I also see that when struggles develop such as the Bart and transit situation in the Bay Area that comrades such as Richard and myself maintain our orientation to the working class as a class and refuse to be silenced or to silence ourselves in the interests of some sort of alliance with the left groups and the left liberal bureaucracy. The orientation to the working class also helps maintain a successful struggle against ultra leftism, both in demands and methods of struggle.  

For us the main issue therefore is the need to maintain an orientation to the working class. This means starting from the needs of and the consciousness of the working class and developing a program and demands based on taking this consciousness forward. The CWI is superior in this area. That is why people like myself joined it. In the past we did not capitulate to the idea that the students could change the world, we did not capitulate to the idea that the Provisional IRA and their methods could solve any of the problems in Ireland, we maintained our orientation to and belief in the working class. And we still do. This is and as far as I can see remains the great advantage of the CWI over other groups.

However and of course there is a however, and not only with regards to the internal life. By the way, on the issue of internal life, this is not irrelevant to the new members the CWI is getting, and the success of winning its new MP in Germany. The CWI just lost its two women MP's in Ireland. I wonder has this new women MP in Germany met and discussed with the two former women CWI MP's in Ireland. But this issue of internal life will come up the more the CWI grows and it will have to deal with it and explain what happened to its new members such as its candidates in Seattle and Minneapolis and other areas. This will create serious problems. The more the CWI grows the more different views will develop and the more the rigid incorrect internal life will come into conflict with this growth. The more splits and expulsions will take place unless the internal life is changed. This is why I think I am doing more to help the CWI in the long term than those members of the CWI who refuse to take up this issue of internal life. Members of the CWI who are conscientiously looking to the interests of that group should be fighting to change the internal life of that group.

There is the issue of a balanced and collective leadership. It is very good that the candidate in Seattle is a woman Comrade. It is very good that the new MP in Germany is a woman Comrade. But why have the most well-known and leading women MP Comrades in Ireland, Joan Collins and Clare Daly, former members of the CWI, not been able to stay in the CWI? I believe thare is a problem of insufficient attention being paid to the need to struggle against the special oppression of women in the CWI. Half the world's factory workers today are women. This is an issue that will not go away. Then there is the issue of collective leadership. It is still, particularly in the older sections of the CWI the one-man band, (almost always a man) leadership.  The leader of the CWI, Peter Taaffe has been in that position for 50 years. This is common with most of the left groups, a dominant male figure for decades.  Comrades, it is not a healthy thing for any political organization to have the same leader for 50 years, it reflects an unhealthy internal life and this will not go away, especially in this new era of the new technology and social media.

And to the issue of left sectarianism. I get the impression that the work in Seattle and Minneapolis of the CWI there is moving away from the worst of the left sectarian attitudes in other sections. This is very welcome. But maybe there is some way still to go. We have contacted them and offered them our help on a number of occasions but we have never received and answer. But in both cities where they have candidates they do seem to be prepared to work in more of a united front way to get their people elected and to build a united front of struggle. If this is the case this is a very good and important development.  I hope it continues and spreads to other areas.

However and back to another however. In Ireland the United Left Alliance was set up with either five or six members of parliament. It was a united front with some resources which gave hope to many tens of thousands of workers given the terrible betrayal of social democracy there. There were different groups which set up this alliance. A small local based group was the first to break this alliance and walk out. The second was the CWI section. It too, with its members of parliament walked out of the ULA, leaving it close to a broken weapon of struggle and leaving the tens of thousands of workers who had begun to look towards it very disillusioned. This was a left sectarian action and very damaging to the movement. So while there does seem to be a movement away from left sectarianism in Seattle and Minneapolis this does not seem to be the case in other sections. I hope I am wrong. For example in Europe now the CWI has three members of various parliaments, there are two ex members of the CWI in the Irish parliament, there are other left MP's in Europe. A non left-sectarian approach would be to try and bring these forces together in a united front of struggle around concrete demands and in mass direct action struggles.

So these are some thoughts on the CWI and where it seems to be at now. I have much more in common with the CWI than other left groups due to its orientation to the working class, its struggle to have a dialogue with the working class not see itself as the teachers of the working class and how this helps it struggle against ultra leftism and its belief that it is only the working class that can change society.

As I have said before I would be prepared to rejoin the CWI but on a number of conditions: that free and open and public discussion would be allowed without slander and lies and expulsions and the denial of democratic rights. That it would be openly accepted that these false methods were used in the past, and that myself and any member would be able to state their views and that it was accepted that factions were a normal part of the building of a revolutionary organization. 

The CWI and the left groups in general were never like the Bolsheviks in their healthy period. This will have to change if the revolutionary left are to become mass organizations. The larger they get the more pressure will arise for discussion and debate and unless the internal lives of these organizations can allow and facilitate this, then they will shatter once again into splinters or remain becalmed at best in stagnant pools. .

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Kshama Sawant, Seattle socialist gets 33% of the vote in council race. Faces incumbent in runoff.

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

In a stunning victory for workers and the poor, Seattle’s Kshama Sawant won 33% of the vote in the Seattle City Council race and faces the incumbent Richard Conlin in a runoff. Conlin flush with cash and name recognition received 49% of the vote and was expected to get an easy victory for a fifth term as mayor.

Ms Sawant ran as the Socialist Alternative candidate for the Washington State Legislature in November last year against House Speaker Frank Chopp and lost, but she received 14,000 votes, about 27% of the total. She now has a real chance of defeating Conlin in the council runoff

Sawant said of her victory last year, “We achieved this election result as an openly Socialist campaign that was largely ignored by the corporate media, with no corporate donations, on a shoe string budget,” and added in a statement "Occupy gave a voice to working people’s rage at Wall Street, and our campaign gave voice to mass anger at the corporate politicians. It shows the potential to build a powerful left electoral challenge to the two corporate parties.”

In her campaign for city council Sawant received endorsements from Two Seattle union locals, American Federation of Teachers Local 1789 and Communication Workers of America Local 37083. A major part of her platform is a campaign for a $15 an hour minimum wage as well as affordable housing, rent control, and against cuts in education and other social programs and public services.  Ms. Sawant is an economics professor at Seattle Central Community College.

While socialists, or most socialists do not believe we can change society at the ballot box, participating in the electoral process is important in that it is a means to publicly challenge the ideology of the 1% and offer an alternative view of society and how it should function. It is a platform through which we can build an independent working class movement that can challenge the dictatorship big business has in the electoral sphere but also the 1%’s control of economic life and the production of human needs in society.

The support Ms Sawant has received in the past two elections shows that socialist candidates can win the support of American workers if these campaigns are run in a way that appeal to workers and our families. Her victory is a victory for all of us.

Most importantly, it is now the responsibility of the trade union movement, socialists, left and all other anti-capitalist activists to follow in the steps of the two Seattle locals that supported Ms Sawant and get involved and help build her campaign and spread it beyond Seattle and Washington State.  It is an opportunity we must take advantage of. There are numerous campaigns nationally around issues like the minimum wage, housing and the defense of other social services as well as civil rights, and Ms Sawant's political victories are an opportunity to bring these campaigns together in a united movement against the 1% and the dictatorship the corporations have over US society.

Facts For Working People congratulates Ms Sawant and her campaign for a $15 an hour minimum wage, will assist her campaign in any way we can, and urges our readers to support it.

Readers can read more or get involved in her campaign by visiting http://www.votesawant.org/
or e mail VoteSawant@gmail.com

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Marxist Economics: Heinrich: a small rejoinder

by Michael Roberts

The debate in the comments section of this blog over the proper response to the misrepresentation by Michael Heinrich of Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall has got lively (see my previous posts, http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/returning-to-heinrich/ and http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/returning-to-heinrich/).  Some of the best Marxist economists in the world (Kliman, Freeman, Carchedi, Lebowitz) have pitched in and the debate continues.  I have not really intervened in the debate so far, but I thought it might be appropriate to add a short post now as a small rejoinder to some of the questions and differences raised so far.

I  think, understandably, that Professors Kliman and Freeman are concerned that none of us defenders of Marx’s law fall into the trap set by Heinrich who claims that supporters of the law are ‘fundamentalists’ and are trying to ‘prove’ Marx’s law by mathematics or by logic and that can’t be done.  Heinrich says at one point that Marx spent a lot of time with mathematical formulations to ‘prove’ his law but gave up.  But I am concerned (and I think Professor Carchedi is) that Professor Kliman’s formulation that the law ‘explains’ but does not ‘predict’ is in danger of conceding to Heinrich that the law is ‘indeterminate’, namely that it is the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, rise and stay the same as circumstances permit.  That is no law, as Heinrich says.  But perhaps our differences here are just a matter of wording when Professor Kliman says that if the law was confirmed in the past then it is likely to be confirmed in the future and that is good enough proof?  Or is he still making the law ‘indeterminate’ by this formulation?  That is what worries me.

Let me put it this way.  For the purposes of the debate, I think Marx’s law is similar to the law of gravity.  In other words, if we see an apple come off a tree, we can predict that it will fall to the ground, but counteracting factors could intervene and the apple could get lodged in the tree or wind could blow it sideways for some time.   But that would change nothing about the law of gravity and moreover our prediction that this apple and others would eventually fall to the ground.  Eventually, the wind would subside and the apple would fall.  Later there would be no wind and all the apples would fall, although there could be significant periods when no apples would fall.  This does not make the law of gravity indeterminate.  It would only be indeterminate if it was decided that the power of the wind was just as strong as gravity and also should be incorporated into the law of gravity.  This is Heinrich’s main point: that a rising rate of surplus value is really a necessary part of Marx’s law, contrary to Marx’s view, and has equal power or weight in determining the direction of the rate of profit and therefore the law is indeterminate.

Marx says that the strength of the law, namely the tendency of the organic composition of capital to rise as capitalism expands the productive forces, is greater than the counteracting factors over time, in the same way that gravity exerts its downward pull on the apple and over time counteracting factors like wind will not prevail in stopping the apple falling.  In this sense, the law is ‘unidirectional and irreversible’, like the law of gravity.  The law of gravity does not say the apple will fall, rise or stay where it is depending on the circumstances, but predicts that it will fall.  If, in reality, it does not fall but rises, that is because of the intervention of counteracting factors that are not part of the law as such.

Wind is not part of the law of gravity and a rising rate of surplus value is not part of the law of profitability (as such).  We can show that this is the case for Marx’s law by starting with some assumptions that are realistic (the law of value operates and the organic composition of capital rises).  On those assumptions, the rate of profit will fall.  Then we can show that there are limits in reality for counteracting factors like a rising rate of surplus value to outstrip a rising organic composition of capital indefinitely, just like the wind cannot indefinitely triumph over the law of gravity.  Thus the law is based on the reality of capitalist development and the class struggle, just as the law of gravity is based on realistic assumptions about the universe.

Moreover, it does not take hundreds of years before the wind gives way and the apple falls and before the law overcomes the counteracting factors and the rate of profit falls.  If that were the case, it would be a pretty useless for our lifetime needs, like knowing that the moon will leave the earth’s orbit in 1.5 bn years and then the earth will start to wobble uncontrollably and life would become extinct.  That is a prediction with not much immediate practical use.

In contrast, empirical evidence shows that the law of profitability operates over much shorter periods.  We can show that the law is confirmed empirically on numerous occasions.  There has been a secular decline in the rate of profit in the US since 1947.  Sure, there are periods when the US rate of profit rose.  In my view, the US rate of profit rose from 1982 to 1997, but the law tells me that this will not last and the rate of profit will eventually start to fall. Heinrich says you cannot know such a thing because the law is indeterminate.

What do Professors Kliman and Freeman say on  this point?  I’m not sure: they seem to say that, as the law is not ‘unidirectional and irreversible’, presumably you can have no idea if the US rate of profit will fall over the next decade or not until it has happened.  But then they say that as it has been shown to fall in the past, so it is likely to do so in the future.  I’m not sure that this interpretation of the law (even if it is Marx’s, as Professor Kliman claims) is a very powerful ‘explanation’ (to use their words) of the law.  Ironically, Professor Kliman has spent much diligent and careful time arguing that the US rate of profit did NOT rise after 1982 and there has been a persistent fall in the US rate of profit since 1947.  And Professor Freeman has recently presented a paper to ‘correct’ the evidence that the UK rate of profit rose after the mid-1970s, claiming that it continued to fall.  If they are right, would that not support the view that the law is ‘unidirectional and irreversible’ in the sense above, and not indeterminate, as Heinrich argues?  Perhaps the professors should make a study of periods when the rate of profit has risen and explain why.   Does the rate of profit only rise when there is a slump and the value of capital employed is sharply destroyed?  Does it not rise sometimes in periods of boom?  If so, can the law explain or even predict these periods?

And that brings me to another possible difference, at least in the debate between Marxists trying to refute Heinrich’s bastardisation.  Does the law just show how there are crises in capitalism, booms and slumps, driven by the up and down movement of the rate of profit; or does it go further and say that IN A WORLD ECONOMY, where capitalism is exhausting all sources of value creation, the rate of profit will fall secularly to new lows and thus make it more and more difficult for capitalism to develop the productive forces?  In other words, the law shows why capitalism will come up against the ultimate barrier, namely capital itself, and so is a transient mode of production like other earlier class-based systems.  It will increasingly descend into stagnation, decay and chaos unless the progressive class, the proletariat, takes over.  If the law is just one of explaining recurrent booms and slumps in capitalism, that would suggest that capitalism could go on forever expanding the productive forces, albeit with waste, inequality and injustice.  If it is more than that, then it provides support for the view that capitalism is not eternal.

In summary, can we reach an agreement in this debate? Let me pose some statements that could have yes or no answers.
1 ) The law is not indeterminate; instead it argues that the rate of profit WILL fall over time, like the law of gravity that the apple will fall if it breaks from the tree.
2) The law is not a fake mathematical ‘proof’ as claimed by Heinrich, but, based on reasonable realistic and relevant assumptions, it predicts that the rate of profit will fall over time.
3) The law is not a law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, rise or stay the same, depending on various counteracting factors that come into play.  If the latter do, the rate of profit may rise, but eventually (and not in a hundred years), the counteracting factors cannot hold sway.
4) There is empirical evidence to back up the law, contrary to Heinrich.
5) The law goes further than just predicting booms and slumps, but also predicts capitalism’s eventual demise (in the sense of not taking the productive forces forward).

These are the questions for yes and no answers that may help you to know where you stand.  My answers are yes to all these statements.

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US society: the calm before the storm?

Occupy Oakland shuts down the docks

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

The Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, wrote on the eve of the second world war that The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.  He explained that the objective conditions and the prerequisites for a workers’ revolution were not only ripe for a transformation of society but were “somewhat rotten.”

He used an often quoted phrase that humanity was faced with Socialism or Barbarism. The Barbarism came on the scene soon after his statements as 50 million or so people died in the war that that followed, as many as 12 million in death camps. Communists, labor leaders, the physically and mentally disabled, gays and lesbians, Romany and as many as 6 million Jews all perished in places like Treblinka, Aushwitz, and Bergen Belsen.

Today, we are not simply faced with socialism or some form of barbarism, as barbarism exists aplenty in the capitalist horror that encompasses most people of the world.  From the factories of Bangladesh to the plantations of Indonesia, sweat shops of Cambodia, and mountains of Afghanistan barbarism is the norm, the legacy of capitalism in its slow and agonizing demise.  The difference is that what faces us now is socialism or annihilation. While nuclear war cannot be ruled out it is the environmental degradation, the plundering of the world’s natural resources in capitalism’s rapacious quest for profits that threatens to end life on this planet as we know it. The environmental catastrophe, overwhelmingly market driven like starvation and conflict is real and capitalism is incapable of solving it.

In the US, the richest and most powerful economy on the planet, inequality and poverty are on the increase and despair and a sense of foreboding exists.  The Great Recession is dragging on longer than the so-called experts expected and the insecurity and fear of falling through the cracks, so useful in keeping folks in check, hovers around unacceptable levels, a point where a spark can ignite a conflagration.

Objective conditions are worsening for American workers and the middle class.  Once powerful unions like the UAW have been tamed through a powerful combination of the employers and the top leadership of the worker’s organizations who see no alternative to capitalism and try time and again to help it to its feet at the expense of workers and the middle class.

Results of a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released today give us a glimpse in to the mood in US society when it comes to the economy and the two capitalist parties.

As expected, the love affair with Barack Obama is not what it was as he has turned out to be quite the war president and a fine representative of the 1%.  83% of Americans disapprove of Congress which is the highest number in the history of WSJ polling and 29% of Americans say the country is headed in the right direction.

When it comes to their own representatives in Congress, a mere 32% of Americans say their representative deserved re-election with 57% of Americans saying they would like to defeat and “..replace every member of Congress if they could”the WSJ adds. There’s “..a strong, deep disconnect between the public and the government that purports to serve them” Fred Yang, a Democratic pollster tells the Journal.  It is not the mood for change that is missing.

The criminal acquittal of George Zimmerman has dealt a significant blow to how the black population sees this country and 54% of them polled said they “strongly disagreed” with the idea that America is a country that judges people on their character and not the color of their skin, 30% of them felt that way after Obama’s election. When those who “somewhat disagreed” are included, that figure jumps to 79%. 

Further on the effects of the trial, the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that 33% of Americans had lost confidence in the US justice system because of it, 24% of them whites and 71% of blacks. This figure is far more reflective of a racist justice system than the details and ins and outs of the legality of an individual case like Trayvon Martin’s murder. Whites are treated differently in this that system. Obviously, those with money are treated the best of all and can get away with murder quite frequently---Zimmerman is the son of a judge and we are supposed to think that this doesn’t matter in America. But with more than two million people incarcerated, close to 50% of them black folks, there are only two explanations for this incarceration rate. 

One is to argue that people with darker skin are more prone to criminal activity which is the racist argument which many whites believe but refuse to acknowledge openly. The other is that the justice system, indeed, the entire system is racist---the latter is the only correct answer, the only answer that offers all workers a future.

The Wall Street Journal is the main publication of US finance capital and the capitalist class as a whole and bases the health of society and economic improvement on the level of profits. The discontent revealed by this survey perplexes them a bit as it arises “..despite and uptick in other barometers of American well-being, including a surging stock market and continued signs of strengthening on the employment front.”  It’s all very simple for them, numbers up, numbers down.

But even their employment numbers are skewed. A Household Survey last month put the number of job increases since January at 753,000. But as Mortimer Zuckerman commented in the WSJ last week,  “there are jobs and then there are "jobs." No fewer than 557,000 of these positions were only part-time.”  “The survey also reported that in June full-time jobs declined by 240,000, while part-time jobs soared by 360,000 and have now reached an all-time high of 28,059,000.” Zuckerman adds. The capitalists don’t create jobs because people need them, they buy labor power if they can profit from it; they can’t profit, you won’t work.

Source

Whether the objective pre-requisites in the US are ripe, semi ripe, or rotten enough for a workers’ revolution that could transform the economic and political structure of society is a matter for debate, but there is no doubt that the objective situation is very favorable for activists and a movement for social change, more favorable than it has been for a long time.  That close to 138 million people opted out of the electoral process in the last election is not due to apathy or reaction as some argue.

The Occupy movement had tremendous popular support for a whole period and at the huge gathering in Oakland that shut down three shifts at the port we had as many as 30 to 40 thousand people present, workers and their families, the disabled, students, single mothers with their children and the elderly.  Union workers, the unorganized, white collar and blue collar all came out. The great strength of the Occupy Movement was its audacity, courage and willingness to defy the law but refusing to wage a political struggle and build anything permanent as well as resisting making any concrete demands was an obstacle to its continued success although it is not dead yet.

What is clear is that Trotsky’s statement about a crisis of leadership, not necessarily a revolutionary one at this point, holds true today.  It’s clear that there is intense anger beneath the surface of US society. There is anger at the rich, the bankers, the coupon clippers who flaunt their stolen wealth ever more aggressively.  Anger at the racism, sexism, inequality and lack of basic services in the richest most powerful country in the world. US capitalism’s wars and the cost of them are not popular and are a major cause of the war on living standards and the 1%’s austerity agenda.

The heads of organized Labor could change this situation if they would offer an alternative to capitalism rather than appeasing it, but they will not, trapped as they are by their own view of the world which is the same as the bosses’. Every little step forward, every victory on the part of the working class threatens the relationship they have built with the bosses and capitalism based on cooperation and labor peace and has the potential to lead to chaos.

The figures here are a small example of what actually exists in US society; a restless, angry and insecure population insecure and wary of what the future holds. I will say with some confidence, it is not going to get any better.  It is remarkable in a way that there haven’t been mass riots in the cities at the failure of the US justice system to protect a huge section of the population from racial violence or women from sexual discrimination and rape and all workers from the threat of joblessness, homelessness and security.  Capitalist courts cannot protect workers; as institutions of a racist society they inevitably abandon the victims that society in general.  Millions have lost homes, jobs, have no health care and can’t afford to get it, as the Wall Street Journal asked a couple years ago, “Why No Outrage?”.

US society is a tinderbox, an overconfident capitalist class will make some serious mistakes. Congress still needs to cut more social spending and at some point there will be further explosions in the streets much like the Occupy Movement. It could be over any number of issues as people are pushed beyond their limits.  There are increasing protests against environmental degradation for example. Strengthening and broadening this movement as it develops is an important aspect of any activists activity and revolutionary socialists must be seen as the most ardent supports of and defenders of the movement as it develops.  And by avoiding the traditional mistakes of sectarianism, ultra leftism (making demands of the movement that do not correspond with the mood) and opportunism, building a revolutionary socialist current within this movement as it develops, a crucial element of it if we art to make permanent gains as opposed to partial victories, will be successful.   

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